Paths of time
by mentalguru
Summary: Clockwork watches on with fascination. Sometimes, he wishes he could interfere in the timeline physically more often. How he envies humans sometimes. One shot. Clockworks P.O.V speaking to the reader.


Title: Paths of time

**Title**: Paths of time

**Rating**: K/T?

**Genre**: Slight Angst… but more of a 'musing'. Clockwork isn't exactly VERY angsty.

**Summary**: Clockwork watches on with fascination. Sometimes, he wishes he could interfere in the timeline physically more often. How he envies humans sometimes.

**A/N**: Can be seen as a pairing, or just a wished-for friendship/fascination mentioned VERY BRIEFLY at the end. (Whichever you want). I must admit I've fallen for this pairing, however this story can really be taken in any direction. One shot. Clockwork's P.O.V speaking to the reader. After T.U.E.

--

Time is such a complicated concept. I have 'lived' it (for lack of a better word) for millions of years and even I can accept this.

I exist outside it, yet within it if you can understand that mortal. It is true that I can sometimes alter the events of time, but it is not something I wish nor can do on a regular basis. The reason for this is partly due to the constraints placed upon me by the ancients and partly due to the twists and blocks leading to similar or even worse events if I did so. After all, I do know everything, as I said to the young half ghost that day.

Well, almost everything. Even I am having trouble understanding certain present events involving a certain person, in a purely abstract way of course, but I shall tell you of that in good time.

How many events would you change if you had my power? You may prevent the holocaust, may prevent 9/11, countless wars and so on, the list goes on. But that is not to be. Certain events are set and fixed, unable to be stopped even by myself. Some paths are destined to be taken, with all other roads blocked to such interference, even with _my_ interference, they would still happen, perhaps only a little later than planned.

Besides, humans have yet to realise they possess the power to change the events of the present- and thus the future. They have more power to alter some events than I.

Sometimes I envy them.

I am simply to sit and watch, unless I am called to choose a path in the fork of a road by the ancients and the observers, as lazy and as hypocritical as they are. They are not to interfere with time, but to simply ask me to do so when _they_ want to, as if that is not breaking their oath. However other than that I am expected to leave events to unfold as they should.

Each human has the power to change events of the future, for better or for worse reader, including you. Each human has some influence, however small it may be, whether it may be in life or death. After all, it is not how you are born that will define who you are, but how you die. I do not mean the method of your death you must understand but your state of being. The way you lived. All are born innocent, despite some humans' strange idea of such a concept as 'Original sin'. 'Sins' cannot be inherited reader, only DNA.

Religious people are unusual creatures. So shocked are they when they find their preconceived notions are false upon death. The many lives they wasted on such notions are simply too depressing to speak of. I could speak of the many horrific acts committed by such quite frankly bizarre and faintly absurd ideas but although _I_ have all the time in the world, you do not. Your time is limited.

Then again, I have been an atheist for such a long time. I have never been alive, never been human. I am more so an alien and neither dead nor alive, simply residing in the ghost zone for locations sake. I will not as bothered here as I would be in your world. The knowledge of a notion such as a god, or many gods is one of the things I was not given- I simply have always been and I have never been born. There is simply no evidence for a god so I assume it must be so that there is none. Some have mistaken me for their notion of a god, an act I find more of an insult than a form of praise. Their gods in their books are such brutal creatures. I try to be as far removed from them as possible.

If I was crueller, like such gods, I would take each of those of religion and show the true events of time they deem as 'holy' as how they really were, but I do not. I leave them in peace. Death is the one source of forgiveness they can truly be offered. The form of solace that life perhaps did not offer them, when they were simply deluded, is found here. They hurt themselves more in the process than anyone else, for they wasted their lives. Everyone is equal in death.

Your life is only a brief moment in the prick of the existence of time. Merely a blip, yet once it is over, it is over forever. You can never return, so although I may be chided for being interfering, I call you to live your life as you still can. Take the roads less travelled by the parade, take risks of love and learn. This is as you should never stop learning while you live, and to stop loving means to be dead while breathing.

I say such things for as I said, I envy you humans. So many twists you can take, while my path is only one and _she_ is not part of it. It is a risk I am not allowed to choose to pursue. Yet she has become and object of fascination. The twists and turns of her life are so many that no-one can be sure what can happen. Not even I. The influence she could potentially hold is great.

It started as simply a watch over the half ghost's friends and family, yet as time ever moves forward (as of course it must) I can not help but wish to meet her and speak with her, if but once, perhaps being able to solve the riddle of her life by doing so. Her intellect was something that surprised me, her possible destiny even more so. I am not normally confused, nor presented a challenge I cannot decipher, yet she is that very puzzle. She does not know I exist, having never met me or been told of me.

It is becoming somewhat of an obsession, this person so difficult to untangle in my mind. I wish to solve it, but am starting to wonder whether I ever will.

I cannot speak with her however, as much as I want to, despite so rare a find. It is not allowable.

"Still staring at the redhead?" I heard the thermos chide. I ignored him, simply watching as she took another path along the road of life.

--

A/N- A cookie to who can guess who the girl is. It should be fairly obvious. Can be seen as a pairing, or simply fascination at something he cannot immediately understand. Whichever you want.

People may be mad at the slight religious bashings- but in Danny's universe remember, all the world religions ARE false- what with the ghost zone being the afterlife, so yeah, I'm guessing clockwork would feel pity at such ideas. No mention of 'god'(s) either ruling over such an afterlife. So yeah. Kind of open to interpretation. Clockwork seems to be the most powerful, and perhaps someone religious people might mistake as agod.

I'm agnostic by the way, not atheist, with a slight bias toward christianity as a possibility. Of course that's simply because my family are of that faith. I've simply researched the atheist stance thoroughly.

Any ways to improve this? Anything you liked? Please review.


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